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01/04/1957 BBC airs their spaghetti-tree hoax report

2:29

BBC: Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino

4:16

Is this the best April Fool's ever? Witness - BBC News

2:11

When the BBC won April Fools' Day in 1957

The spaghetti-tree hoax was a three-minute hoax report broadcast on April Fools' Day 1957 by the BBC current-affairs program Panorama, purportedly showing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from the family 'spaghetti tree.' At the time spaghetti was relatively unknown in the UK, so many Britons were unaware that it is made from wheat flour and water; several viewers afterward contacted the BBC for advice on growing their spaghetti trees. Decades later CNN called this broadcast "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled."
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